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Welcome to the 'All About h2g2' section of the h2g2 FAQ. This is where you can find general information about h2g2.
If you want to see a complete list of questions answered by the h2g2 FAQ, you can go to the h2g2 FAQ Index at any time.
Contents of this Section
What is h2g2?
h2g2 is the Earth Edition of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the best-selling book by Douglas Adams. h2g2 is the entertaining and unconventional guide to Life, the Universe and Everything, and it's a guide that's written by visitors to the website - people like you.
The result is a living, breathing guide that's constantly being updated and revised, driven forward by the very people who use it - and everyone can join in, just by registering (there's a whole section in this FAQ on Registration and Membership where you can find out more about registration).
And it's fun. Most definitely fun.
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Why is the site called h2g2?
'h2g2' is short for 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'.
We figured that 'h2g2' was considerably more memorable and quicker to type than 'hitchhikersguidetothegalaxy'. We also think it sounds rather snappy, and it gives us something to explain every time someone asks.
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What can h2g2 do for me?
Essentially you can read the Guide, talk about the Guide and contribute to the Guide - and have a great deal of fun at the same time. The best way to get into h2g2 is to explore the Guide, so check out the h2g2 Tour for a selection of typical Guide Entries to whet your appetite.
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What can I do for h2g2?
The strength of h2g2 lies in the combination of the Community and the Guide. If you want to help h2g2 become the all-singing all-dancing environment it is rapidly evolving into, then simply taking part is the best thing you can do. Explore the Guide and write your own Guide Entries; hang around on the Conversation Forums and make lots of Postings; visit other Researchers' Personal Spaces and comment on what's there. You'll make lots of friends and you'll get more and more out of h2g2 the more you visit.
It's also your site, so if you have any comments on the site - good or bad, we don't mind - then pop along to the Feedback Forum and start a Conversation there. We want h2g2 to be the best Community in the world, and to do that we make a point of listening to what the Community wants - so it's up to you to let us know what you think.
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What's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?
You've got a choice of answers here. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is either:
A hugely useful, informative and entertaining book, the standard reference work for all those struggling to make it from one part of the universe to another part of the universe on as little as 30 Altairian dollars a day. It's published by Megadodo Publications (situated on the planet Ursa Minor Beta) and is available through many reputable (and even more disreputable) booksellers throughout the galaxy. The site you're looking at is the Earth Edition.
A book/BBC TV series/set of records/play/computer game/towel which began life as a BBC radio series written by Douglas Adams.
And what does The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy have to do with h2g2? Let's leave that for the next question...
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How are h2g2 and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy related?
h2g2 is the Earth Edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's not full of helpful hints about how to avoid the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal or how to mix a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, but it is full of thousands of entertaining and useful Guide Entries about life on Earth and how to live it.
In other words, h2g2 is taking the fiction of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and turning it into fact. And like the original books, h2g2 is seriously good fun.
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Who's responsible for h2g2?
h2g2 is a part of bbc.co.uk run by an in-house team. Although the h2g2 offices are based at the BBC in London, UK, the website is truly international and has Researchers from all over the globe contributing to the Guide - at the last count we had Researchers from over 85 countries helping to expand the Guide.
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Is h2g2 anything to do with Douglas Adams?
Douglas founded h2g2, so h2g2 is the real Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the most official Hitchhiker site there ever has been and ever will be.
The concept behind the original Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was a hand-held guide to life in the Universe, and the concept behind h2g2 is an online guide to life on Earth. The Internet enabled Douglas to realise the vision he had back in the mid-1970s, and h2g2 is constantly moving closer to the guide described in the book. So not only was Douglas involved from the start of the project, it was his original idea that sparked it all off.
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Why does h2g2 exist and how does it fit into BBC?
h2g2 is extremely complementary to BBC. Where BBC contains content written and published by the BBC, h2g2 contains content written and published by the public; in both cases the content is of a high quality, but h2g2 is quite a different model. They fit together like hand and glove...
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How can I give feedback, or ask questions about the site?
The best way to give feedback is to start a new Conversation in the relevant Conversation Forum. Remember that every Guide Entry on the site has a Conversation Forum hanging off the bottom, so it's important to pick the right Forum so the right person sees your comments.
If you've got a question about using the site, whether a question for the staff or something you think your fellow Researchers might be able to help you with, then visit the Feedback Forum and follow the instructions to find the right place to ask your question.
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